Clean Air News

As the new home of NJPIRG's environmental work, Environment New Jersey can be contacted regarding this news release. 

A new study released today by NJPIRG titled Children at Risk: How Air Pollution from Power Plants Threatens the Health of America's Children finds that 1,696,787 children in New Jersey live in the shadows of old, dirty coal-fired power plants. These children are exposed to pollutants that cause a host of health problems, from asthma attacks to neonatal death and slowed neurological development. In fact, 99,488 of the 105,914 children in New Jersey suffering from asthma live near a power plant.

Over the past few years, numerous peer-reviewed studies have appeared in scientific journals documenting how pollution from power plants has serious long-term health consequences for children. However, too often this information has not reached the general public, and when it did, it was not in a form accessible to parents. Children at Risk was prepared by the Clear Air Task Force in order to inform parents about the dangerous impact of power plant pollution on their children and to provide solutions that allow parents to protect their children's health.

Children at Risk details the dangers of breathing power plant emissions, including how:

• Sulfur dioxide released by power plants accounts for more "particulate matter" pollution than any other source and can lead to neonatal death, cause serious health impact such as asthma attacks, and slow lung function growth;
  
• Millions of children live in areas that violate national air quality standards due to the amount of ozone smog which may permanently damage and stunt developing lungs, triggering asthma attacks and possibly causing asthma;
  
• Air toxics, like arsenic, chromium, and mercury, can have devastating impacts on children and neonatal development, acting as carcinogens and neurotoxins; and
  
• Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change, increasing the risk of infectious disease and heat related illness, especially in children whom recent research suggest are most vulnerable to climate change.

In New Jersey, the report found that:

• 998,339 children in Hudson County and 525,480 children in Mercer County live within a dangerous proximity to a coal fired power plant.
  
• 89,369 (or approximately 1/17) of these children suffer from asthma, the sixth worst rate in the nation.

"Children at Risk shows that our children's health is at stake if we fail to clean up these plants, especially since we have the technology to do it," said Dr. L. Bruce Hill, Senior Scientist at the Clean Air Task Force and author of the report. "With a plan moving through Congress for a cleaner energy future, now is the time for parents to better understand the risks of air pollution on their children—and the ultimate cost of delayed action."

Unfortunately, rather than taking immediate steps to solve this health threat to our kids, the Bush administration has proposed a major rollback of the New Source Review provision of the Clean Air Act, which requires power plants, refineries, and other industries to install state-of-the-art pollution controls when they make major pollution-increasing plant modifications. Each year this program has kept more than a million tons of air pollution out of our skies.

Meanwhile, however, the Clean Power Act, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jim Jeffords, is expected to come to a vote in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee next week. This bill requires the industry to make dramatic reductions in all four of the major power plant pollutants, including the first-ever mandatory CO2 emission cap. It also requires every power plant to meet modern emission limits.

"We applaud Senators Corzine and Torricelli who have co-sponsored the Clean Power Act, " said David Edelstein.